From Conrad's Heart of Darkness to Coppola's Apocalypse Now

22 Pages·2011·0.48 MB·English

GELLY FILM JOURNAL 1 (2010)
Between Texts and Images:
FromConrad's Heart ofDarkness toCoppola’s ApocalypseNow
ChristopheGELLY
UniversityBlaisePascal (Clermont-Ferrand 2),France
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was reputed as not liable to adaptation for a very long
time, more precisely from 1939, when Orson Welles tried and then gave up the project to
produce and direct Citizen Kane instead,1 until 1979, when Francis Ford Coppola released his
widely acclaimed Apocalypse Now, which was immediately hailed by the critics as a very
successful adaptation from Conrad, although the writer is never once quoted in the credits.
Yet we could be surprised by this reluctance in directors to tackle Conrad’s text as a possible
scenario, since Heart of Darkness is also often quoted as one of the first and most exemplary
cases of impressionistic writing, i.e. a text which heavily relies on images, however confused
or uneasily rendered in graphic terms, so that the central position of images in the novella
ought to have been an argument towards its adaptation, despite the relatively complex quality
of the writing itself. On the other hand, Coppola’s very free adaptation of the novella is also
relatively unsettling or disturbing for the viewer since the director not only neglects to quote
the text as an explicit source of his work2 but also introduces new literary references that are
1 On that aborted project by Welles, see Seymour Chatman, “2 ½ Versions of Heart of
Darkness”, Gene M. Moore (ed.), Conrad on Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997),207-23.
2 AlthoughCoppola’s wifeEleanordoes so inher narration about theshootingof themovie in
the documentary entitled Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (directed by Fax
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very far indeed from Conrad. As a result, the imagistic in Conrad is as enhanced as the
literary—and, as we shall see—the textual elements in Coppola, but both dimensions seem at
first sight not to meet: Coppola’s textual elements do not adapt Conrad, and Conrad’s images
seem absent from the movie. This problematic relationship between words and images in both
works accounts for their hybrid nature in so far as they both stand at the crossroads of two
different media, and yet again their hybridity differs in nature since it is not duplicated from
novella to film. Cinema is per se a hybrid form, since a filmic text functions thanks to several
“matters of expression” (in Hjelmslev’s words), whereas a novel is a text made of only one
“matter of expression”—the written text—, but the specific way this hybridityis dealt with in
Coppola, and the explicit presence of images in Conrad, making the text hybrid, call for a
deeper analysis of this surprising parallel. Looking for the motivations for that situation—for
the similarity and contrasts in the way hybridity is played out in both works—we shall first
focus onthevalueand reassessment oftextualityversus imageryinConrad,so as toshowthat
the writer is building up a whole aesthetic imagery that includes the graphic element in its
literary quality. Then, we shall move on to an examination of Coppola’s movie and try to see
how the director reshapes Conrad’s message according to his own perspective on images as
linked to post-modern spectacle and absurdity and eventually tries to devise a new
relationshiptoimages that wouldinclude bothironicdistance (so as toavoidthemanipulation
by images exemplified in the military context of the movie) and re-appropriation by the
spectatorof animagisticmeaning.
Bahr and George Hickenlooper, 1991). I take up this observation from Thomas Elsaesser and
Michael Wedel, “The Hollow Heart of Hollywood: Apocalypse Now and the New Sound
Space”, Conrad onFilm, 151-75.
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Conrad’s textand images
Textuality in Heart of Darkness simply does not prove reliable in every respect. Whether we
have to do with books (metatexts, autonomous in their nature) or letters (which we could
consider as metanarratives, addressed to a reader and therefore not existing entirely outside
any production/reception context), there are many examples of that quality. When he is going
up the Congo river in search of Kurtz, a trading agent gone wild in the company of natives in
colonial Belgian Congo, Marlow, Conrad’s second-level narrator, finds a book bearing on
somefinerpoints ofseamanshipandwrittenbya Towson orTower(heis unsureofthe name)
and feels he has come upon “something unmistakably real” (p. 189)3 through that discovery,
especiallybecause he reads through it “an honest concern for the right way of going to work”
contrasting sharply with the devious, “unsound” methods wielded by the whites in command
he has met so far. Yet, something puzzles Marlow immediately after he has opened it: he
reads in it annotations which he believes to be cipher. He will later learn that these were made
by a Russian who owned the book, so that the secret thought to be enclosed in the writing
turns out to be a hollow one—it was merely Cyrillic writing. Similarly, Marlow is entrusted
byKurtz with the letters the latter wrote epitomizinghis “thought” and meant for his Intended
in Brussels but when he is about to deliver these documents to her Marlow reveals: “Iwas not
even sure whether he [Kurtz] had given me the right bundle” (p. 248). Another, telling clue
lies in the fact that Marlow bowdlerizes Kurtz’s report on the “Suppression of Savage
Customs” before giving it over to a representative of the Belgian trade company that
3 The edition used here is Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and Other Tales, ed. Cedric
Watts (Aylesbury: OxfordUniversityPress,1996).
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employed Kurtz, thus pointing again to the process of loss involved in the communication of
and by texts: before handing the manuscript, he tears off the postscriptum that was so
outrageous (p. 243) and which concluded the altruistic pamphlet on the civilizing mission of
thewhites inAfricabytheseominous words: “Exterminateall the brutes!” (p. 208).Those are
only a few among many examples of the unreliability of texts, upon which Marlow himself
lays a heavy stress in front of his audience gathered on the Nellie, a cruising yawl on the
Thames. Not only texts but the very essence of language seems altered by this bias which, in
the imperialistic context, is primarily political and meant to justify what Marlow ironically
calls “these high and just proceedings” (p. 155) connected to the cause of civilization. Thus,
when he witnesses the attack on a camp of natives, he comments on his interlocutor: “he
called them enemies!”, then comments again a bit further down (p. 154): “these men could by
no stretch of imagination be called enemies”. Likewise, when the Russian he meets at Kurtz’s
camp tries to justifythe barbaric practices of his idol, who displays the heads of dead enemies
on poles surrounding his house, Marlow again questions the validity of the language that is
used:
I had no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of rebels. I
shockedhim excessivelybylaughing.Rebels!What wouldbethenext definition I
was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers and these were rebels.
Thoserebellious heads lookedverysubduedtome on theirsticks. (p. 222)
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A fit way for Marlow to epitomize the nature of his experience during this travel by steamer
up river is then given on p.168: “It was as unreal as everything else”. Not only textuality but
the very process of writing seems to partake of the political defacement of reality wrought by
imperialism, which appears through the reference to maps as inscribing the settlers’ presence
onto native soil,4 this inscription being a corollary of the tearing away of bits of land from
Africa as the main image for that ruthless domination exerted by whites.5 This unreality
constitutes a dead-end for classical narrativity and then urges the text at large towards the
search forother ways of expressionoutsidetextualityas such.6
A first move in that direction lies in the use of a frame narrative by an anonymous
speaker that contains the narration by Marlow of his travel up the river. This containment
works as a distancing from the explicit content of Marlow’s narrative and enables the
anonymous narrator to keep at bay, while being a witness of, Marlow’s confrontation with
darkness. A fit example of that strategy is the way he repeatedly wavers between fascination
for this story and sudden reminders of the enunciative situation meant to re-establish the
distance between story and narration. Repeatedly, he and other listeners bring back Marlow,
4 Marlowexpresses his loveformaps onp. 142in thenovella.
5 “To tear the treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral
purposeat thebackofit thanthereis inburglars breakingintoasafe” (p. 177).
6 To put it in other words, we could quote those used by John Hillis Miller about the
“indirection”—hence the impossibilityto attributeastable meaning—characteristicof another
novel by Conrad, very much similar to Heart of Darkness as far as Marlow’s narration is
concerned: “Thematically and structurally Lord Jim is an example of this absence of origin,
center, end.” See John Hillis Miller, “The Interpretation of Lord Jim”, Harvard English
Studies 1(1970): 213.
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the second level narrator, to the reality of civilization counteracting his relatively mimetic
discourseonwhites gone native:
“Try to be civil, Marlow,” growled a voice, and I knew there was at least
onelistenerawakebesides myself.(p.184)7
Similarly, the evolution of the richly connoted term of darkness shows this process of
containment through the frame of oral narration: at the close of Marlow’s narrative, darkness
is no longer qualified as “impenetrable” as at the beginning but simply “immense.” Thus,
orality and the enunciative situation work a splitting of experiences between narrative
development inside the framing device and the gist of Marlow’s experience in Congo that is
allowedabetterexpressionthroughthat distance.
In fact,thesplit is not suchatight onesince overlapping and cross-references dooccur
between both narratives—that of the frame narrator and that of Marlow. For instance, we find
the same personae on the Nellie anchored on the Thames and among the people Marlow
meets in Africa: a Director of Company, and an Accountant (the Lawyer present on the
Nellie, though, is significantly absent in Congo since law seems absent there too). Then, the
topic of tobacco used by Marlow as an incentive in his story-telling and by the Russian he
meets in Kurtz’s camp also works at bringing together seemingly separate parts of the whole
novella (see pp. 204 and 230). And the episode of the black helmsman killed by a spear in
7 Other examples, though less relevant in our perspective, appear on pp. 173, 187, 204 and
206.This list is not exhaustive.
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Marlow’s steamboat duplicates the story of Fresleven, a Danish trading agent who was killed
in the same fashion, as it was told earlier to Marlow by the company (p. 144). This strategy
corresponds to the creation of a new, indirect representation process signified by the frame
narratorquite explicitlyandfamously:
The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies
within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensityto
spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like
a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow
brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are
madevisiblebythespectral illuminationofmoonshine.(p. 138)
Meaning then lies outside, in the narrative links between several enunciations. This paves the
way to the whole allusive, imagistic representational process staged by Conrad to circumvent
thedead-endofdirect representationbytextuality.
Howdoes this strategyproducean imagistictreatment oftextuality? It seems clearthat
Conrad’s aesthetic programme dismisses narrative clarity in Marlow’s discourse to relocate it
in the setting of a shared experience based on the oral discourse. This shared experience is
made to be felt through the inscription of images that connect both narrative levels in the
novella and thus enact the circuitous, indirect communication presented by the frame narrator
through the “kernel” metaphor. That images are chosen for that function can be explained by
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their relative disconnection from the plot and by their greater adaptability to both scenes of
the narrative at large. For instance the image of bodies connects the mostly silent presence of
listeners aboard the Nellie and the “unspeakable” ordeal gone through by Marlow as he
witnesses a realityhefails toencompass. Thus, theriveris mainlydescribedas an enigma and
abody:
Watchinga coast as it slips bytheshipis likethinkingabout an enigma.(p. 150)
We had just floundered and flopped round a bend, when I saw an islet, a mere
grassyhummock of bright green, in the middle ofthe stream. It was the onlything
ofthekind; but as we openedthe reach more, Iperceived it was thehead ofa long
sandbank, or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of
the river. They were discoloured, just awash, and the whole lot was seen just
under the water, exactly as a man’s backbone is seen running down the middle of
his backundertheskin.(p. 198)
The recurring use of light and darkness symbolism also connects both narratives through a
common visual reference: Marlow talks about the darkness of human hearts just as the sun
goes down over the Thames. Images appear as valuable from the viewpoint of representation
only inasmuch as they intertwine both narratives, not when they try to depict the situation
directly, as it happens for instance with the brickmaker’s painting, so overladen with potential
symbolical meanings as tobecomeindeterminate and meaningless:
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Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped
and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was sombre—almost
black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torch-light
onthefacewas sinister.(p. 169)
This picture could be a representation of justice as blindfolded (pointingto impartiality) but is
debunkedbythe“sinister”aspect ofits face,belyingtheilluminativevalue ofthesymbol.8
Thus, the imagistic strategy put forward by Conrad revolves around a new aim which
is “to make you see,” as he puts it himself famously in his Preface to The Nigger of the
Narcissus, but this “you” has to emerge from a bond—what the frame narrator calls “the bond
of the sea” (p. 135)—allowing representation to acquire a definite validity. That bond is the
image as connecting the two narrative levels. For example the alternation of darkness and
light epitomizes themeaningofMarlow’s experiencein Africa, and establishes a parallel with
the intermittent signs of attention given by the audience on the Nellie. The meeting with the
Russian is a case in point here, since the shift from light to darkness that occurs during that
scene, and which is presented as a negative epiphany, is also related to the actual situation of
theframenarrativewhichunfolds inthedusk:
8 I am indebted for that interpretation to Cedric Watts’ note on this passage in our edition of
thenovella(p. 270-271).
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I looked around and I don’t know why, but I assure you that never, never before,
did this land, this river, this jungle, the veryarch of this blazing sky, appear to me
so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human
weakness. (p. 217,myitalics)
Noticeably, the Russian also constitutes an important thematic link between both narrative
levels for his discourse is described by Marlow in terms that very much recall the way
Marlow himself is considered by the frame narrator—and maybe by the reader too.9 This
impressionistic, imagistic value of Conrad’s textual strategy relying on a shared perception is
then further exemplified through the use of what Ian Watt calls “delayed decoding,”10 which
lies in the understanding of a diegetic element or situation only after a delay (e.g. when
Marlow looks at the skulls surrounding Kurtz’s camp and fails to understand immediately
they are skulls, seeing them first as knobs of wood—see pp.220-221). This device is a
reference to the necessary distance acted out on the Nellie properly to resituate and
contextualise—and textualise, too—the meaning of experience, in an epitome of Conrad’s
imagistictreatment oftextualityandwriting.
Coppola’s ApocalypseNow
9 See p. 219: “There was no sign on the face of nature of this amazing tale that was not so
much told as suggested to me in desolate exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted
phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs.” Does that not correspond to Marlow’s digressive
narration,too?
10 Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century (London: Chatto & Windus, 1980). The notion
ofdelayeddecoding appears onpp. 175-79 and 270-72.
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